Tent Life in Siberia eBook

Throughout the holidays the whole population did nothing
but pay visits, give tea parties, and amuse themselves
with dancing, sleigh-riding, and playing ball.
Every evening between Christmas and New Year, bands
of masqueraders dressed in fantastic costumes went
around with music to all the houses in the village
and treated the inmates to songs and dances.
The inhabitants of these little Russian settlements
in north-eastern Siberia are the most careless, warmhearted,
hospitable people in the world, and their social life,
rude as it is, partakes of all these characteristics.
There is no ceremony or affectation, no “putting
on of style” by any particular class. All
mingle unreservedly together and treat each other with
the most affectionate cordiality, the men often kissing
one another when they meet and part, as if they were
brothers. Their isolation from all the rest of
the world seems to have bound them together with ties
of mutual sympathy and dependence, and banished all
feelings of envy, jealousy, and petty selfishness.
During our stay with the priest we were treated with
the most thoughtful consideration and kindness, and
his small store of luxuries, such as flour, sugar,
and butter, was spent lavishly in providing for our
table. As long as it lasted he was glad to share
it with us, and never hinted at compensation or seemed
to think that he was doing any more than hospitality
required.

[Illustration: ANADYRSK IN WINTER]

With the first ten days of our stay at Anadyrsk are
connected some of the pleasantest recollections of
our Siberian life.

[Illustration: Woman’s Mittens of Elk skin]

CHAPTER XXVII

NEWS FROM THE ANADYR PARTY—­PLAN FOR ITS RELIEF—­THE STORY OF A
STOVE-PIPE—­START FOR THE SEACOAST

Immediately after our arrival at Anadyrsk we I had
made inquiries as to the party of Americans who were
said to be living somewhere near the mouth of the
Anadyr River; but we were not able to get any information
in addition to that we already possessed. Wandering
Chukchis had brought the news to the settlement that
a small band of white men had been landed on the coast
south of Bering Strait late in the fall, from a “fire-ship”
or steamer; that they had dug a sort of cellar in
the ground, covered it over with bushes and boards,
and gone into winter quarters. Who they were,
what they had come for, and how long they intended
to stay, were questions which now agitated the whole
Chukchi nation, but which no one could answer.
Their little subterranean hut had been entirely buried,
the natives said, by the drifting snows of winter,
and nothing but a curious iron tube out of which came
smoke and sparks showed where the white men lived.
This curious iron tube which so puzzled the Chukchis
we at once supposed to be a stove-pipe, and it furnished
the strongest possible confirmation of the truth of
the story. No Siberian native could ever have
invented the idea of a stove-pipe—­somebody
must have seen one; and this fact alone convinced
us beyond a doubt that there were Americans living
somewhere on the coast of Bering Sea—­probably
an exploring party landed by Colonel Bulkley to cooperate
with us.